Friday, September 14, 2007

Blasphemous?

For those of you who have not been around Gwenie lately, she adores Dora the Explorer. Everything she does seems to mirror things that Dora does. She even uses "gracias" "de nada" "arriba" and "ayi esta!" (I know I spelled that wrong). Anyway, her bilingualness is pretty funny. And I feel like she is actually learning from Dora, not that it justifies how much she idolizes it, but still. . .

So the other day as she was wandering around completely unfocused while we were reading scriptures I had an idea. We are still in Nephi and reading about the Liahona. It occurred to me that the Liahona is a lot like "Map" on Dora. So I made up a song about it and sang it to Gwen (to the tune of the map song, "Who can help you say 'hey we figured out the way' what's my name? Liahona, say it again, Liahona!"), Gwen loved it! Then I summarized the journey that Nephi, Lehi and family were going on, in a song similar to a Dora song. Anytime Dora goes on an adventure the map gives her directions, usually in three steps and then sings about it. So it worked perfectly; instead of something like "pyramid, jungle, lost city!" it turned into "wilderness, ocean, prom-ised land!". So Gwen knows the story of Nephi a lot better now, but "B" kinda sees this as sacrilegious, or irreverent at best.

Anyway, it is just kind of funny and at least it kept her attention for a bit!

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I think that's great! I don't think it's blasphemous at all. It's all about finding a way to liken the scriptures, right?

Unknown said...

Great idea!

Eddie said...

Bad lyrics to hymn music is blasphemous. Church lyrics to pop music, like the soundtrack to Singles Ward or other Christian pop music, is better but not always uplifting. Church lyrics to fun songs that stick in your head for educational purposes is just fine, especially if it works. I had a greenie on my mission who couldn't stop singing "gentile" songs while we tracked. We finally decided that he could sing the music as long as he made up missionary lyrics to go with them. He took that and ran with it. Before long he had come up with lyrics to all his favorite songs with topics that ranged from teaching discussions to morning gospel study to memorizing scriptures to member missionary work. I.e. "Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be gentiles!" We both got pretty into it and would practice while we walked along. Before long, we were getting "performance" requests at dinner appointments and district meetings. By the time I got transferred, neither one of us could even remember the original lyrics.